


fragments from a broken galaxy

by shiningjedi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Awkward Comfort, Family, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Slavery, Some Chapters AU, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-04-22 17:41:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14313834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiningjedi/pseuds/shiningjedi
Summary: Various SW snapshots, mostly in response to prompts and/or requests on Tumblr.





	1. power outage

Plo Koon was leaning against a statue, trembling, something blue and awful-looking that was possibly his blood dribbling down from under his mask onto his tunics. It was well past midnight, and Plo was newly back home from an extended mission and not getting any younger - he would have most likely been asleep when the power had gone out, Obi-wan realised, and would have had his mask off, in his climate-controlled room ….. when the system turned off and oxygen had started automatically filtering as backup, he could have never woken up.

Well, it seemed the Force hadn’t _completely_ abandoned them.

(And here he was, contemplating heresies in the heart of the Temple - as the most senior being present, no less. Was this the true strain of the war, or was -)

“I will be fine for a few minutes,” Plo was saying to Rig Nema, “please tend to those who need assistance more urgently”.

Obi-wan blinked as the words cleared his head, moving forward to reassure some younglings, here, and help them find their crechémaster, to the side, there, to check on how soon the last generators would be working again, forward again to bow to whoever needed his attention - “Master Kenobi,” said Mace Windu, bowing just as deeply in return; his voice sounded almost as relieved as Obi-wan hoped he didn’t look. Clasping forearms briefly with his friend, he crouched down to greet Yoda as Mace smoothly moved to take over the situation.

“Well you have done, young Obi-wan,” he said, and he shrugged, feeling awkward.

“I was just holding the fort until you came back, Master,” he replied, and inwardly winced at his choice of expression; a fort was a place of _war_ , not a sacred monument to millennia of efforts towards galaxy-wide justice and peace -

“Our meeting with the Chancellor, we did not finish.”

Obi-wan frowned, surprised that needed stating - _part of the Jedi Temple’s electricity had been compromised by a still unknown and untracked slicer_ \- that surely called for not only a recall of the Grand Master and Master of Order to oversee the situation, but immediate action by the Chancellor themself -

What had the meeting been about, again? Something to do with PR, maybe - no, it was over the discussion about reducing troop rations … Master Windu had called the suggestions “self-destructive and inhumane,” had demanded time with Palpatine -

“Obi-wan? Alright, are you?”

Once again, he blinked and came back into the present - Yoda was looking up at him, sympathetic, weary. Obi-wan was tired too - Force, the whole Order was - but all the same …

“Yes, thank you, Master. Master … might I be so forward as to suggest, once the power comes on, that you get a little sleep?”

Yoda snorted, more bitterness than light-hearted mockery, and rapped Obi-wan’s shin with his cane. It was not a particularly hard strike, and he rubbed at it more to make the situation less awkward than anything."Sleep, sleep! With those awake and frightened, my place is, not with those who are aware not!”

“As you wish, Master.”

Obi-wan stood, bowing to show the absence of hard feelings; as Yoda made his way towards the younglings, a nervously pacing padawan almost tripped over him. Deciding to miss the imminent lecture about watching one’s feet, and the perils not doing so could undoubtedly lead to, he quietly wove through the gathered, moving towards Plo, who had now sunken down into a meditation pose and was allowing himself to be tended by Luminara Unduli.

Mace caught his eye and gave a hand signal - _power back on_. He gave the slightest nod, eyebrows raising just a fraction, to indicate he’d understood, as he reached Plo’s side and crouched once again.

“How are you feeling, Master?”

Luminara, well-trained in pretending to be deaf over years of service as a healer, had her hand clasped firmly around his arm as she kept her eyes clamped shut, searching for something in the Force.

His mouth-plate tilted back in what Obi-wan knew was a smile; the blood, if that was what it had been, had evaporated or been wiped away. “ _Proud_ of _you_ , Master Kenobi.”

 

Obi-wan had never quite understood civilians talking about their biological “families,” but with the comfortable bustle (the Temple too often felt empty now) and the distant humming of the generators back, younglings long past their bedtime giggling distantly behind him, and Plo’s smug, gentle, warmth, he thought he might, at least, understand the meaning of the “kind but embarrassing uncle”.

Luminara finished doing whatever the Moriband she had been, and gave Plo some kind of injection, which looked like it hurt.

Whether or not this was his “family,” it was his sacred duty to protect and defend it, and he only hoped he was as capable of doing so as his colleagues seemed to think him.


	2. a house divided

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Satine doesn't want Bo-katan to leave. Bo leaves anyway.
> 
> Kids might not belong in war, but sometimes war is all that kids have left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt by @finish-the-clone-wars on Tumblr.

“Bo, come back! Bo! As your Duchess, I _order_ you to -”

Her little sister turned back to her and spat, knuckles red from blood and and her short blade equally red from the hair that she’d just cut. “You can’t order me to do _shit_. Mom was my duchess, but you’re just another teenager dressing up in fancy clothes and saying genes give you the right to rule while you-”

Satine vaulted over the palace balcony onto the dirt below, skinny limbs and blonde half-curls and her mother’s still-warm pearls hanging too-big on her ears. “Blood gives me the right,” she snapped, and Bo-katan scoffed and spat again, pointing where the earth hungrily soaked it up.

“Blood that you washed off yourself with all the tears you didn’t shed after the traitors slaughtered our Ma?” Realising too late she’d revealed weakness, called her mother what she’d called her as a child, before the war, she doubled down before Satine could reply. “ _I_ have her blood! _I_ have her hair! _I_ just _gave my blood to Mandalore_!”

Belatedly, Satine looked where she’d been pointing, and saw it pigmenting the earth.

She looked back up; her cheek and lips were bleeding.

“Bo,” she said again. Softer. Gentler. Like the lullabies she’d tried to sing when Bo-katan had wanted to see out of the window, not be coddled like a babe. Not wanted to be held and comforted like Satine had so desperately wanted for herself.

Like she still wanted.

She wrinkled up her nose and blinked away the tears, but by the time she could see again, Bo-katan was out of view. Her baby sister, bleeding for the culture of war that had just killed their parents.

Her baby sister, with a stolen jetpack and and a dead guard’s armor, running off in search of death.

She wanted to chase after her, to plead with her not to do this, or to slow down and talk, or to let her come along, let her be her _sister_ , not her ruler or her enemy, but –

She had a duty that she could only leave one way.

Her hand found its way to her vibro-blade hilt, but instead of drawing it she unbuckled the belt and tossed it down into the dust. Better not to be tempted – as much as Bo now claimed she didn’t need family, she wasn’t going to take the last person that she had, let alone in cold blood.

She could only hope that Bo-katan would come around and agree with her, before it was too late.


	3. another mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing my OC, Mun'pavukim, who is basically if Carrie Fisher were to be a Jedi in 900 BBY.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for @SerenLyall here, or @weary-hearted-queen on Tumblr. I love you, hon.

The mountain wind was cold and biting, pushing her downwards like chains around her ankles as she climbed, whipping icy tendrils of air into the gaps between her headdress and lekku.

“Is it much farther, Ma’am?” asked a tired voice behind her, and she turned to the leader of the ragged group of assorted species, genders and ages that had been following her for the past few hours; her face creased from determination into sympathy.

“Just a few more ten-steps, Ruslan, and then we’re at the summit.”

 

Muna had spent the last ten-and-something months in an unceasing campaign to wipe the Outer Rim of slavery, her status of Jedi Master, the lethality of her double-bladed lightsaber, and her ability as a Twi’lek to … _blend in_ with the captives often the only things keeping her alive.

Her ship – an unmarked cargo transport converted to rough habitability, now decorated with string and wood and metal and bone tokens from those already rescued beings, both as thanks and as talismans of luck and blessing – was harbouring in the nearest valley, almost in sight.

The best part of a standard year in, the physical and emotional strains were beginning to get to her, but she wasn’t about to make Ruslan Tifes, a soft-spoken, personable Iktotchi with a scar running from beside their right eye up to their horn, nor any other the other fifty-odd beings with them now, shoulder the burden of knowing. That wasn’t what she was there to do.

 

By the time they’d all boarded the ship it was well into dusk, and the warm lights of the cargo ship – _home_ , one or three of the ex-slaves had begun to call it, and it pulled at and twisted her heartstrings in a way she couldn’t quite begin to fathom – seemed to draw them to it like cell-lamps to a moth.

The food was edible and the water fresh, and the atmosphere the kind of immediate welcome only tortured beings who had remained kind against all odds could give.

Muna soon found a moment to slip away, and did so, typing her progress report manually into her datapad. After that, and after ensuring their correct route was set, she rolled onto her sleeping-mat, not bothering to change her robes to sleepwear, merely loosening her tabards, brooded for a few moments into her pillow.

She’d scaled another mountain, and rescued another drop in the ever-springing ocean of her work. While credits and comfort may have been overrated, she didn’t deny wanting some chocolate once in a while.

She slept.


	4. repairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huyang was built for detailed construction, not for comfort, but he still does his best when needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout-out, as always, to @finish-the-clone-wars on tumblr!

“Good morning, Professor,” said a voice to his left – organic, humanoid, estimated thirty to forty years from initial activation – and he lifted his exterior ocular lens, put down the emitter he had been fiddling with and turned.

  
Human, female, light-brown skin, black hair, approximately one-point-six-eight metres tall. Distinguishing marks: two metal studs, located on… ah. That was who it was.

  
“Master Depa Billaba! I am glad to see that you are still operative!”

  
Her mouth smiled, but there was no crinkling around her eyes. Her wrists were bandaged, he noted, and her skin was less saturated than in many of his previous references, unless his hue detectors were in need of a replacement. “Thanks, Professor,” she said, her hands tucked into the endings of her sleeves.

  
The gesture of a nervous youngling, not of a respected Master. This girl – woman, rather, she hadn’t been a Padawan for years – was not ‘in a good place,’ as the organics said.

  
It wasn’t really his to wonder why, or even offer his sympathy – there had been rumours, of course, but then there were always rumours, and in the end it was never his business, was it? Or the business of any of the other droids telling idle gossip instead of working, for that matter. He rifled through his vocabulary banks for an appropriately kind choice of phrase.

  
“How may I help you, dear?”

  
She opened a synthleather pouch located on her belt and pulled out a green kyber crystal and a few blackened shards of metal, vaguely resembling his existing data on her lightsaber. “I could do with some repairs.”

  
“On the lightsaber, or on you?” he joked, and she frowned briefly, knuckles tightening around her crystal before she placed it on the bench.

  
“I’m not certain, to be quite honest, but let’s start with the lightsaber.”

  
The three limbs on his back were already examining the twisted components, picking out what could be readily replaced with what, so he spared one of his front ones to lightly touch her shoulder. “Count it as already done.”


	5. one last chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for a prompt via @celebrate-the-clone-wars!

Grim adjusted his bucket’s placement under his arm, wiping his slightly sweating hands onto his kama, and nodded gratitude to the Jedi Healer who had greeted him, a cyan-coloured Nautolan. They gave him a faint smile, nodded back, and opened the curtain in front of him, leaving the room to grant him privacy.

  
“Hey, Grim,” said Toska, blue eyes lighting at the sight of him, and he crossed to the low stool beside her, taking in details swiftly and automatically as he sat.

  
Her green skin was slightly sallow, and her eyes and cheeks seemed sunken, but she was sitting up in her bed and wearing her headwrap, which he took as a good sign. His last visit, her hair had lain spread against her pillow in its thick curls, and she hadn’t even seemed embarrassed at the fact, just grateful to him not for staring. (It wasn’t really related to his train of thought, but he hadn’t realised until that day that she’d been starting to go silver – she had always seemed so bright and youthful, until – .)

  
“Hi, General,” he said, and her smile faded as she took his hand in her two thin ones, diamonds of black ink spilling down her frail fingers.

  
“You know, you don’t have to keep calling me that.”

  
He knew that she’d been trying to ease his transition, to serving a new Jedi, but he also knew it wouldn’t work. She’d always be his – his liege, his friend, his – what did civvies call it? ‘Mother’? Yeah, that was it. “What should I call you instead?” he asked, and she leant her head back against the wall, closing her eyes for a moment, revealing shadowed sephia lids instead of a healthy olive. He estimated that the course of the virus was about seventy-percent run… he’d taken her back to Coruscant five weeks ago, when she’d gotten too ill to walk. It’d made quicker work of the brothers who had got it – three weeks, the longest lasted, once they’d got off that awful planet. He wished she weren’t so strong, sometimes. That it was less drawn-out and painful.

  
“What should you call me?” she echoed, a hint of her former sing-song in it. He nodded affirmation. “Whatever you want to, Grim.”

  
Dear Toska, always dredging up the old free-will debate. “Okay. Hey, Toska.” It felt less dramatic than he’d expected it to, saying it out loud, but maybe a little warm.

  
Her eyes opened, and they were shining brighter than before. His were, probably, too, he realised, blinking rapidly, and he leant forward and tenderly wiped her tears away with the edge of his knuckle.

  
“Toska, is there – anything at all I can do for you?”

  
He was expecting something small, an errand that would help him feel useful, or maybe some ridiculous stunt like proposing to General Vos and then showing her the footage, but –  
“Yeah. I want to see you smile.”

  
She’d been the one who’d given him his name, only a few days after he’d been promoted to Commander and assigned to her, this strange Mirialan Jedi who’d done everything from circus flips to adopting lothcats to try and get him to smile. He’d never done it – it wasn’t that he’d never felt happy, he’d just never expressed it. The Kaminoans had liked that. His uncertainty, or maybe grief, must have been observable, because she let out an audible sob and then collapsed back onto her pillow, covering her face in her hands, shaking. “I’m – I’m sorry, Grim,” she managed, voice thin and broken, “I didn’t – didn’t mean to start crying on you.”  
“I know, Toska,” he said, bile rising in his throat as he grasped her hands again, kissing her forehead and crooning wordlessly. “I know.”

  
Gradually, she calmed, lying exhausted under her thin blanket. “I love you, Toska,” he said, quiet and thinking that he should go before the Healer came back in and – what? Blamed him? Scolded him? Told him it wasn’t his fault?

  
Her dark lips parted, just a little; a wisp of hair had slipped out of its wrap. “Could you give it one last chance, for me?”

  
‘Mother’. The civvie word was ‘mother’. “Yeah.”

  
Like always, when she opened them, her eyes were blue. “That’s my boy.”


	6. peaceful in the deep

It was … oddly peaceful, if Ponds were honest to himself, space. Like when he’d been drawn underwater back on Kamino, a cadet exercise during a storm, and everything had been soft and quiet before he’d managed to drag himself back up. Be flayed by the freezing wind as he and his brothers managed to get back up onto the platform, limbs shaking and fingers numb. 

He’d wanted to close his eyes, then, to let himself sink. Let himself drown. But he’d pulled himself back up for his brothers, for his batchmates. To prove the Kaminoans wrong. He wasn’t sure who he was proving wrong, right now. Maybe the bounty hunter. Maybe himself, or something. He allowed his breathing to slow regardless…

And the storm lashed him, purple lightning and strong arms -

Strong arms?

He opened his eyes. There was an oxygen mask on his throat, and his hand wrapped in darker arms, bandaged with cream sleeves over top. Mace sees him awake and starts, lifts his wrist up and kisses it.

Hm. Maybe he was proving something right. The silence had been deafening, back at Kamino, in the void. Here it was soft and nurturing. He closed his eyes. He knew they’d open.


End file.
